Saturday, November 14, 2015

SSX EA's classic gets back on board

It's all downhill from here - and we couldn't be happier

Every score could be higher. Every race faster. Every combo extended.
EA's thrilling stunt racer reboot delivers dissatisfaction like little
else - fuelling bittersweet OCD-style replay loops of thrilling depth.
The main solo mode, World Tour, lasts seven hours, yet acts as a
glorious tutorial. No sooner does the 'final' cutscene roll than Explore
mode taunts you into a fresh challenge: 0/153 drops completed. Each
drop is a three-minute-ish track, split into bronze, silver and gold
challenges. The original SSX had just eight tracks, and still offered
near-limitless replay potential.

Quantity is no substitute for craft, however, and after 20 hours
we're unsure if SSX offers the sculpted track genius of its
predecessors. In SSX Tricky, we were finding previously unthinkable
shortcuts and ramps months after release. Our gut says the gargantuan
new SSX must lack such nuance, but most tracks are yielding surprises
multiple plays later.

Initially, SSX is intuitive and bewildering. We plump for the new
control scheme, holding the right stick down to 'charge' jumps, using
the left stick to pre-wind twists. In mid-air, the right stick grabs the
board for tweaks - for example, tap right to use your right hand, and
rotate the stick 90 degrees to grab the nose. It makes sense, plus you
can perform wild tricks without remotely mastering its subtleties.

Tracks have never been so intense, pulsing with ramps, ridges and
rails. No sooner do you land than you're jumping again - in the
milliseconds of reaction time, combos are made or broken, races won or
lost. The seamless transition of thought into deed creates an almost
Zen-like flow - over-think your grab or spin, and a clumsy slam often
follows.

SKI TRIPPING

SSX thrives in its intensity, rewarding skill with seamlessly
integrated audio and visuals. Run DMC's iconic 'It's Tricky' hijacks the
soundtrack when you land a dazzling Uber move, as flares and scenery
glow.
Nail a Super Uber trick and the scenery reforms ahead of you,
creating subtle yet useful new ramps to maintain your combo. Imagine
PS2's hypnotic-music-shooter Rez - with it's 'union of the senses' -
allied to the twitch-shooter, reflex feel of multiplayer Call of Duty...
only with fewer robot babies and swearing Arizonan preteens.

Wiping out really hurts - the colours bleed away, the soundtrack
crashes and your senses mute. Handily, you can rewind time and keep the
combo flowing, but it also rewinds your score, avoiding spamming of key
scenery. In races, rewinding only affects you, allowing rivals to surge
ahead. Combos aren't multiplied by the number of tricks you perform in a
row, but by your 'flow' - the faster and more varied your run, the
higher the multiplier. You get more points for one lengthy, stylish grab
than three fiddly grabs in one leap.

World Tour features nine real-world regions split into multiple tracks,
with a signature deadly descent. They're like boss battles against the
elements, and mostly provide welcome variety to the race / trick
structure. Highlight? Fitz Roy, Patagonia, gives you a squirrel suit so
you can glide, Batman-like, over chasms - it sounds absurd, but it's
well balanced, and surprisingly challenging.

Mt Everest is less fun, asking you to tackle thin air with an oxygen
tank. It amounts to pressing R1 every few seconds to stop blacking out -
more annoyance than challenge.

Veterans will sail through World Tour, and only three tracks out of
more than 30 gave us extended problems - look out for Zombies With
Jetpacks in New Zealand. Nailing a bronze medal is hard enough, while a
gold medal seems impossible.

One fellow journo actually felt the Explore mode challenges were
unfairly hard, and the opponents too cheesy - you seem unable to keep
up, even by following the same line. Having sunk hours into Explore
mode, we can confirm this theory is, to put it politely, bollocks.
They're supposed to feel that way, certainly at first. After sinking in a
few hours, levelling up the right characters (Alex is best for races,
for instance, or Mac for tricks), then unlocking the double-perk slots,
buying stat-boosting boards, hitting every speed-pumping flare and every
obscure shortcut... after all that, we creamed 30 seconds off times we
once thought unbeatable. That's not to say it can't be frustrating -
maddening, even - and many won't have the gumption to persevere. Shame.

Other gripes? Too few moments really stick in the memory. It's all good -
often excellent - but there are few dramatic tonal shifts, either
visually (like SSX's mental Tokyo Megaplex) or structurally (like SSX3's
astonishing 30- minute final run). Plus, it's hard to bail unless you
really hog a grab, and your rider 'snaps' to rails too magnetically.

The loading times between tracks are minimal, but still puncture the
flow; the Thin Air challenge is duff, and the trick system - while
incredible - is only as exciting as it was back in 2001's superb SSX
Tricky.
That's the bind. As a reboot, SSX teeters between nostalgia and
evolution, and perhaps falls fractions short either side. Tricky fans
will miss leaping through windows in the skyscrapers of Mercury City,
yet feel slightly numbed by the familiarity of board-around-neck Super
Ubers.

It's pitched between Tricky's insane stunts / contrived architecture
and the quasi-reality of SSX3's mountains, and it almost nails the best
of both. Office buzz says newcomers will adore it, seduced by the speed
and sensory impact - think Burnout meets Skate. Whatever your skill, SSX
makes you feel insanely good, flattering your skills and rewarding
improvisation. Its old-school core has been invigorated by the right
stick controls and audio-visual makeover, with the Ridernet (like
Autolog) system keeping you up to date with friends' scores, times and
activities - there's always something to do.

Whether this is worth 90 percent or more depends on your appetite for
perfection - to strive for gold, to find every Geotag, or to spend weeks
crafting combo lines when online foes edge you out. Until the community
grows, its impossible to tell if it will gather that momentum, or if a
handful of elite players will score so freakishly high, no one else will
want to compete. The Clash Of Kings Hack Tool is currently the best hack service available on the net which allows players to start generating free Gold, Silver, Wood and Stone in their Clash Of Kings in game accounts.

We can groan about minor quirks, or the contradictory forces of
nostalgia and ennui, but that would be overthinking it - and if SSX
preaches anything, it's to commit to your instincts.

In the moment, when you're busting out some lunatic set of flips and
grabs over a 200ft dam in New Zealand, the screen flush with colour as
Flux Pavillion roars through the speakers, it's hard not to think that
you're playing the most exciting game, well, ever. Innovative yet
familiar, accessible yet deep, realistic yet absurd - it's a game torn
between risk and reward. You know - the place SSX always felt best.